..Despite their obvious benefits for patients, the likely impact of these efforts on health care costs is uncertain. In this context, we examined relationships between hospital outcomes and expenditures in the US Medicare population...

..Although it has been assumed that the proficiency of the operating surgeon is an important factor underlying such variation, empirical data are lacking on the relationships between technical skill and postoperative outcomes...

..African-American patients experience higher mortality than Caucasian patients after surgery for most common cancer types. Whether longterm survival after rectal cancer surgery varies by race is less clear...

..Several studies indicate that bariatric surgery decreases asthma severity, but either enrolled few patients or were not focused primarily on asthma. Furthermore, none compared the effects of different bariatric surgical procedures...